CITY TO GET CUT OF COKE KINGPIN'S CASH

The city will get a piece of the blood money amassed by a slain cocaine
kingpin as the NYPD and feds crack the European bank accounts that held his
illegal fortune.

Jose (El Chepe) Santacruz Londono, one of the richest and most ruthless of
international druglords, was part of a Cali cartel responsible for 80% of
cocaine on city streets in the late 1980s. He ordered the hit on crusading
journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue in 1992 for digging up too much dirt on
Cali drug operations in Queens.

Londono secreted millions in drug profits in banks around the globe before
he was killed at age 52 in a gunfight with Colombian soldiers outside
Medellin in 1996.

The NYPD and the feds continued to take apart his empire after his death by
targeting the middlemen who laundered his drug profits.

"The message is, even now, a decade later, no one has backed off," said
John Gilbride, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement
Administration New York field office. "The profits are what drive the drug
trade, and no one is letting the cartels reclaim their money."

The NYPD, state police and the city's office of special narcotics
prosecution will share some $3.3 million culled from Londono's accounts in
more than a dozen European banks from Copenhagen to Budapest. The checks
are to be presented in a ceremony tomorrow.

The dead drug czar was known as the man of a thousand faces because he used
plastic surgery to disguise his identity.